1000 Words
by LaVioleBlanche
Summary: Cougar has only ever carried two images in his wallet: his I.D., and a photo. And nobody... NOBODY... takes that photo away. Inspired by a picture on LJ by Nanuk Dain. M/M


I blame this entirely on Nanuk Dain. That's right, you guilted me into it. I'm a sucker for awesome art and flattery. Sadly, you caught me in an angsty mood, so... the fluff takes a while to kick in. Sorry about that.

I realize that Jensen's niece and sister are probably called something other than what I have dubbed them; I just named them as a tribute to characters from one of my favorite movies. I will be ridiculously impressed and possibly in love with anyone that can figure out which movie it is from such a random and crappy clue.

~::~

Okay.

The cold, dark cell he's been thrown in, the repeated beatings, the lack of food and sunlight- these are all things Cougar has come to expect in being captured by Max's lackeys. Honestly, he would be almost disappointed with anything less "stereotypical movie-villain", as Jensen would call it. Admittedly, breaking all the fingers on his right hand before even asking him anything seems a bit much. And he knows it's always a good idea to strip a prisoner- never know where people will hide a lock pick- but couldn't they have left him his underwear? Or his hat. He'd be happy without the underwear if he could just have his hat back. At least, he thinks with a faint smirk, the man that took the hat won't be wearing it; Cougar garroted him through the bars this morning using a thin braid of his own hair.

The smirk disappears as the door screams open.

"So," the Max-lackey, or "Mackey", as the Losers have begun calling them (there's just so damn many of them; who has time to learn their names?) steps into the cell, flanked by a pair of mercenary guards that won't think twice about using those machine guns. "Mister... Carlos 'Cougar' Alvarez." The Mackey is holding his wallet, Cougar realizes, flipping open the soft leather and peering at what little evidence of his existence there is. The Mackey looks down at him, chained and naked and dirty and bloody, and smiles a charming government smile. "You mind if I just call you Carlos?"

_Yes, I mind. Only Jensen calls me Carlos_. He doesn't say anything out loud, of course. He's not going to give this _pendejo_ anything. He wants information, he picked the wrong Loser. Cougar is good at many things. The first and foremost is, obviously, sniping. The second, depending on who you ask, is either stony silence or mind-shattering sex. In this situation, it's silence.

"Well, now, Carlos." Max's henchman begins pacing, still talking as he leafs through the contents of the wallet. "I see you're an organ donor; that's very thoughtful of you... and you've got a membership at Borders; nice to know you're a well-read man, Carlos... ohh, but I see from these receipts that you've got a bit of a sweet tooth: cotton candy, Mishka Kosolapy, caramel corn... why, Carlos!" The guy looks up from the slip of paper, seemingly shocked. "Think of the poor people that will inherit your organs!" He chuckles, lets the receipt drop, then follows it as he drops into a sudden crouch in front of the captive man. "Sooo, Carlos. You're quite the deadeye. I gotta say, I'm impressed. I realize this is maybe a bit forward but..." He scootches a little closer, grins conspiratorially. "I know for a fact that I could put in a good word for you, if you felt like skipping this little unpleasantness and lending us those eyes of yours. Fix those fingers right up, get you a decent meal-"

Cougar scoffs. Clearly this guy is new. It's going to take an awful lot more than a few snapped digits and a rumbling belly to get a word out of him.

"No?" The Mackey shrugs and stands, glances down, and almost casually sends the sniper curling in on himself with a kick to the gut. "Well, can't blame a guy for tryin'. I'm sure we can get you to open up a bit once we've gotten to know each other better." He watches Cougar wheeze and glare for a few seconds before turning back to the wallet. "Lessee... there's a coupon for McDonald's- I'll take _that_- and ten... twenty... twenty-_six_ dollars... and-"

There's a frozen moment, the whisper of paper being drawn from leather.

"Well, well, well, well, well. What do we have here, Carlos?" The Mackey's voice is different; there's less of the 'let's be buddies' and a helluva lot more cruel, sadistically interested amusement in it.

He's found The Picture.

"Aw, Carlos, how domestic! Lookit this, boys." He passes the photo to the guards, who snigger and nudge each other and look down at him with the word FAGGOT clearly labelled in their eyes.

It's not like it's a picture of him and Jensen kissing or even holding hands. It's the only image aside from his ID that he's ever carried in his wallet: him and Jensen and Laurel-Ann, who is wearing his hat, all three of them smiling into the camera that Sydney held, Laurel-Ann making surreptitious bunny-ears behind her Uncle Jake's head, Cougar's fingers curling into Jensen's shirt at his shoulder. Happy. Perfect.

"Hey, hey, hey," one of the soldiers taps the photo with the barrel of his gun. "I recognize the guy. That's their hacker."

"Jake Jensen?" The Mackey arches an eyebrow and takes another look. "Hey, whattya know. It sure is. Who knew?"

"I always knew them Losers were a buncha queers," the other soldier says, grinning down at the naked prisoner.

The Mackey glances at the picture again. "Isn't that just precious? Nothing says 'healthy family' like a couple of homo ex-soldiers and their adorable little adopted future dyke. Doesn't it just warm your heart?" He kicks out again, catches the sniper's jaw and sends him flying, his head cracking against the wall. "Tell you what, Carlos. How bout I go find the rest of your little _fambly_ and I bring 'em here for a visit? It wouldn't be hard at all. You like that?" Cougar doesn't react beyond glaring and gritting his teeth when another blow hits him in the stomach. "Huh? Wouldja like that, Carlos ol' buddy? A little family reunion? I could arrange that." The chained man shakes his head, clearing the aftershock of the kick, and spits a clot of bloody saliva into the Mackey's eye.

The smirk vanishes from the guy's face. He nods once at his guards, who move in and begin a swift bout of kicking and pistol-whipping.

One of them gets a hold on Cougar's upper body, pins him down while the other grabs his right foot and forces it up and back, straightening his leg and raising it. Adding a little more pressure. A little more. Until the sniper feels tendons twanging, snapping, strained and screaming. His patella grates against his tibia, and he braces himself for the moment of the break.

Another nod, and the pressure eases to a just-bearable burn. The Mackey crouches again, still wiping his face, and looks the captive in the eye. "Listen up, pal. This guy," he jabs a thumb at the soldier, "won't hesitate to break your leg when I give the order. I know you know that, cos you're the kind of guy who wouldn't hesitate either. You should also know that we've got much more interesting ways to get information out of that noggin of yours. Howsabout I list a couple of my favorites? Let's see, there's the one where we heat a screwdriver with a blowtorch and jam it up under your kneecaps, that's a good one. If that don't do it for ya, we can always give you a nice dose of one of our many fine withdrawal-inducing drugs, followed by a few nights in the freezer room. Sound fun? Then we'll let a few of the boys have a turn at you. How 'bout it, boys?" He looks up at the guards, who grin. "Yeah, I think that sounds like a plan. So, Carlos." His gaze returns to Cougar, whose expression has not changed. "Before we have to go trough all that... why don't you just let me know where, exactly, the rest of your unit is?"

There's a long, agonized moment of silence. The sniper, brows furrowed in concentration, drags his left hand up, balled into a fist, and slowly extends his middle finger.

"Well, that's one answer, but I'm afraid it's not the one I was looking for." Max's sidekick grabs the finger and snaps it in one easy move. Cougar snarls, kicking, but the guards are bigger than he is, and they've eaten and drunk more recently than he has. "Let's try that again." The Mackey shifts, pulls the picture out of his pocket and holds it up. "You ever wanna see your little blonde fuckbuddy and your brat again, you start talking. Where. Are. They?"

At this point, Cougar starts laughing.

It's not often that Cougar really laughs; he'll chuckle and smirk when Pooch cracks a joke or Jensen puts on a reenactment of Godzilla versus Gidhorra using puppets made of spare computer parts, but it's really once in a blue moon that he full-out laughs. He's laughing now, laughing and spitting blood and maybe a tooth and shaking with mirth at the confused and almost-scared looks of the guards and Mackey.

"He cracked or what?" One of the soldiers asks warily, and Cougar just laughs harder at that, never tearing his gaze from the face behind the Mackey's head.

It's the face in the picture, that same beautiful, blonde-framed, bespectacled face, only the expression on it is not one of careless joy but grim, murderous intent. It's an expression that Jensen wears about as often as Cougar laughs, but when he wears it, people die. Usually painfully.

Jensen brings the hand that clutches a bow knife up and drags the blade across the throat of the soldier holding the sniper's leg. Cougar immediately swings his foot up and back, striking the man who is pinning him. The guard falls, swearing, and the Spaniard catches his head between his ankles, twists and feels the satisfying snap of his neck.

"What? What?" Max's minion spins around, gaping like a fish.

The hacker whips his other hand through the air, clonking the Mackey over the head with the butt of his Benelli. The guy collapses like he's been hamstrung, and Jensen follows him, a vicious snarl on his face, striking his friend's captor again, and again, and again, and then he's raising the arm with the knife again and bringing it arcing down into the Mackey's shoulder, then back up, down again into his gut, his cheek, his clavicle, the man screaming and trying to kick Jensen away, but the blonde Loser is too strong, too enraged, and the scream turns into a strangled cough, then a gurgle, hot carmine spraying the Dora the Explorer T-shirt the hacker's wearing.

"Jensen."

Cougar tries to sit up, wincing. Jensen continues, stabbing and stabbing, the man's face nothing but a ruined, hollow shell, his chest carved open.

"Jensen!"

The hacker swings his arm once more, planting the knife in the Mackey's throat.

"Jake!"

Jensen finally stops, breathing heavily, his eyes wild, and turns to his friend. "Hey, Cougs." His voice is shaky, but the grin he offers is not. He leaves the knife embedded in the corpse and shuffles over to the sniper. "How you doin'?"

The naked man shrugs. "Not bad." To be honest, he's much more worried about the younger man.

"Not bad?" Jensen lifts his hands, letting the gun fall, and cups Cougar's face, blue eyes scanning him. "Jeez, man. Your hand. Jeez."

"It's fine," the sniper says, which is a blatant lie.

"Bullshit," the tech says, anger and relief clearly warring in his tone as he runs his hands over his comrade's form, checking for broken ribs (he finds three) and other injuries.

"I've had worse," Cougar amends truthfully.

Jensen frowns, digging through the mangled corpse's pockets until he finds the keys. He quickly unlocks the chain and the Spaniard stands, wincing, prompting the hacker to jump up and sling an arm around his waist. They hobble toward the door, the blissful sounds of gratuitous violence going on outside, proof that the Losers have arrived in full force.

"_Un momento_," Cougar bends down slowly, agonizingly, reaching for the slip of paper that has somehow escaped the bloody mess of the Mackey's remains. His face twists with pain, and Jensen ducks swiftly, grabbing it before the sniper has to bend any lower.

"Jesus, man, you're gonna kill yourself over a piece of paper. What's so important-" The blonde flips the photo over and falls silent, looking at the picture.

"That," Cougar says quietly, "is very important."

The hacker looks back up at him, and the sniper is treated to the most beautiful sight on Earth or in Heaven: Jensen smiling, all radiance and love, absolute love and adoration focused only on him, glowing through the haze of pain and anger and war around them, creating a shield around them. That smile, that's worth breaking every bone in his body, worth bleeding for, worth dying for.

Jensen leans in, kisses Cougar soundly on the mouth, then pulls away a little to place gentle kisses on his cheek, the tip of his nose, his forehead. "You're right," he says as he carefully stows the photo in his pocket and slings a supporting arm under the wounded man's shoulders again. "That is important."

When they get back to the hotel room, after the usual bout of scolding from Clay, Pooch and Aisha, Jensen stitches his lover up, makes him a bowl of soup, changes his shirt (to the one he bought the day after they first kissed which reads "Save Gas, Ride A Cougar"), then pulls out his laptop and makes a webcam call to his niece. She is delighted to hear from them, and Jensen receives a stern admonishment for letting Uncle Cougar get hurt again. After promising very seriously to make sure it doesn't happen again, Jake closes the computer and kisses the sniper again, long and loving and tender.

"I love you, Carlos."


End file.
